


'We' Could Have Been

by Mimca



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Fan Killing Game (Dangan Ronpa), M/M, Metafiction, One Shot, Pre-Game Headcanons, Pre-Game Oma Kokichi, Pre-Game Saihara Shuichi, Spoilers for NDRV3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 21:24:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17553464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mimca/pseuds/Mimca
Summary: He thought the feeling he was looking for, the word he had forgotten the shape of, he could find it in Danganronpa. Danganronpa was real–the shock, the anger, the sadness and, yes, the despair, were real, in a way his own world long ceased to be. But he starts to reconsider when he meets one intriguing fan online.Meanwhile, the fifty-second season is happening, and Rantaro Amami tries to survive it.





	'We' Could Have Been

> `【3:152】 ` **DANGANRONPA 52**
> 
> 1 Name: **BOTTOKUMA** ID:m11037000  
>  Welcome! This board has been automatically created to discuss the *first trial* of the ongoing fifty-second season of Danganronpa,  
>  and it will be closed automatically on *9/4/20XX* at *00:00:00*. If you have any trouble with the live broadcast, send your query  
>  at /support, along with the broadcasting service you're a dependant of. Have fun, you bastards!  
>  2 Name: **Anonymous** ID:u54nXdXY6  
>  first class trial is starting;; im not ready for d despaiir （ΟΔΟ；；）  
>  3 Name: **Anonymous** ID:4g48BuJkj  
>  throwing this out here for folks who missed the investigation (⌐■∀■)  
>  [Truth Bullet 1: Monokuma File 1] The victim is the Ultimate Detective, Bassui Tadashi. The victim's body was discovered in the  
>  abandoned laboratory. The estimated time of death is 6:20 p.m. The victim was struck in the back of the head with a blunt weapon.  
>  Signs of strangulation were also found.  
>  4 Name: **Anonymous** ID:umb82v9he  
>  >4g48BuJkj you're a life saver  
>  5 Name: **Anonymous** ID:9PgEaLbPW  
>  File: cabbageman.png (1.05 MB, 800x600)  
>  amami may be a murderer but hes still dreamy (＾་།＾)  
>  6 Name: **Anonymous** ID:vus0d4y01  
>  hes not?? wtab the body discovery annoncmnt??  
> 

He stopped scrolling.  
  
Now, Rantaro Amami could not be the blackened. Thoughts bubbled up like many fishes on the bowl of a moonshine. Amami, face lingering with this all too knowing smile, stolen from the Ultimate Detective he had supposedly murdered. He was just the type of guy awash with light, a natural camera Candid, too good to be true; the type of guy older women cried about in his uncle’s office, having just learned of the pain of a broken heart. The Protagonist type. But they had gone silent, leaving just a slow, rising warmth, and a feeling they were meant to have lost.  
  
He rewinded.  
  
_The light broke around Seri Hanaike's silhouette. The camera lingered a few seconds on his face, wrinkles of his smile softening gradually as he registered the scene right before his eyes. Blur transition from his shoulder to Amami’s. The usually aloof adventurer was holding–and the camera sunk to follow his line of sight–a crooked metal pipe, held like a mast he could hold onto. Another shot: the pipe was neatly splitting the picture into two. As the camera slowly refocused on the background, They saw first the pink hue of a corona of blood. Before They saw him: the toppled Ultimate Detective, Bassui Tadashi. Head caved in like a watermelon._  
  
_Monokuma's voice spoke merrily through the speakers._  
  
_“A body has been discovered!”_  
  
_Ah! But the rules say…_ His hands reached for the keyboard hurriedly. Eyes unfocused shifted between his fingers and the live feed, counting as they left the elevator the silhouettes of the fifteen remaining students leaving the elevator, unto the trial grounds. He felt his face twitching reflexively to get rid of the sweat collected over his upper lip. He did not care. He had to best them, the real blackened of the case, as the real Ultimate Detective–  
  
_A body discovery announcement will occur when three or more students discover a body_ , the sentence read on the screen.  
  
… But that didn’t make sense. Sure, that ruled Hanaike out. But it was _Amami_ who was the main suspect. He read the message on the board again, kicking his back against his chair’s. There was something he had missed, something he was the only one able to understand.  
  
And the trial had started, untroubled, without its titular Ultimate Detective.  
  
_“Since everyone’s so hung up about what Seri saw in the lab, why don’t we let him testify directly?” The Ultimate Ichthyologist eyed Rantaro from under the brim of his cap, which prompted the latter to press on: “If you feel uncomfortable, you could tell us what the fish saw instead.”_  
  
_Seri’s face lightened, his bad mood already forgotten, but Kiriko Kuromori quickly shut him down. “Why do we have to go through this charade? We’ve already got Seri’s testimony. Unless he_ lied _, of course.”_  
  
_“I don’t think he lied,” Rantaro explained. “I just think his testimony is incomplete.”_  
  
_Her expression remained even. If there was but a sliver of doubt about Rantaro’s innocence, she would be rallying the undecisive classmates–those, They noted mentally, who did not wish to take upon themselves the responsibility of a wrong verdict. They also took note of Atsu Owari’s small act of rebellion:_  
  
_“… I don’t see a problem,” the Ultimate Horticulturist chimed in. “If I believe flowers listen to us, I must believe fishes can speak, too… I guess.”_  
  
_His half-hearted argument was not as important as the fact that he did argue, which was enough to make some classmates rejoice as well. Kiriko did not retort, but her chin kept pointing haughtily at the Ultimate Adventurer: it would be Rantaro’s only opportunity to prove his innocence._  
  
_“So,” reprised Rantaro carefully, “what did you–your fish friend see?”_  
  
_“Well, there was–” and the Ultimate Ichthyologist stretched his syllables as he recalled the sequence of events, “–Rantaro and the detective guy–don’t remember, no, don’t_ know _his name! And Rantaro was standing there with a pipe? And there was a lot of blood everywhere. B–But he was with his best friend Seri Hanaike, so he wasn’t scared! Nooo, sir!”_  
  
_“Did something special happen when… Seri entered the room?”_  
  
_“… Oh! That’s when the announcement played!”_  
  
That’s it! _“The body discovery announcement, according to the rules,” and Rantaro pulled up his Monopad, quickly followed by his classmates. “‘… will occur when three or more students discover a body.’ In other words, at least three students must see the body to trigger the announcement. By that rule, Seri must be the third person to have seen Bassui’s body. And I’m the second.”_  
  
_“You mean the first,” Kiriko taunted._  
  
_“Alright, the first,” Rantaro conceded with a smirk. “It doesn’t change the situation. If we do the math, that means there‘s one other person among us who has seen Bassui’s body.” He did not yell his final argument like the other protagonists–his voice simply dropped at the same time he lowered his nose line, and his eyes scanned the trial grounds as a predator would look at its prey. “Wonder why they would keep it a secret?”_  
  
_Doubt and confusion lingered for a second, before someone–Natsumi Shouggeri, most likely, voice beaming with artless pride like a child to please the teacher–helpfully shouted_ murderer _, and panic erupted into the room. Accusations and defenses flew left and right without quite a cohesion. Standing right in front of Rantaro, so that the camera would match his vision, Kiriko’s mask was spitting out black smoke._  
  
Various comments flooded the board. No one brought up the message that predicted this situation–but he had noticed it, and he felt a misplaced sense of pride at that fact. Someone cautioned, with a semantic pirouette, that the blackened themselves would not be discovering the body.  
  
_The rules say three or more “students”, though. Whoever has a Monopad is a student, regardless of their status as a blackened._ And before he knew it, the words wrote themselves under his artful fingers. He pushed his body back into his chair. Threw himself forward again, exhaustion covering the light with purple butterflies. Came back the cold naked, the seashells talking ugly thoughts in foreign tongues.  
  
_(despairful.)_  
  
_(a fiction.)_  
  
_(you should not believe it.)_  
  
_(you should not believe them.)_  
  
The window notified him of a new message.  
  


> 16 Name: **Anonymous** ID:vus0d4y01  
>  >d3TecT143 +1  
> 

The feeling that colored his skin at this moment–he could not name it, but he knew it was a dangerous one to have. The kind of feeling that brought

_(despair.)_

that would have him dead, forgotten, or, even worse yet, crying his woes in his uncle’s old velvet armchair, in a lingering of cold coffee and dry cigarette butts. And it was dubious it was reciprocated–the guy on the other side of the screen had not even bothered to add but one word. And yet. And yet he might have been simply enamored by the idea–and circumstances had made it so it could be nothing but that: an idea–of finding his rival.

After all, no Ultimate Detective role would be complete without him.

He kicked back.

*

_All students were now convinced Kiriko was the blackened. She did not rebut the accusations either; she looked straight at Rantaro with an odd shine in her eyes–had he not been convinced she was physically unable to do so, he would say she was smiling._  
  
_He had since demonstrated that, due to Yara’s amagoi performance, the water levels had allowed Shie’s body to be leveled from the lower grounds to the second floor. But as he had tried to prove the Ultimate Raindancer used her talent to tamper with the crime scene remotely, giving herself an alibi, the suspicions had only been reported on Kiriko instead. Natsumi–the two girls, he realized, were in their own way testing this trust he had clamored for–was padding out the trial, but that would not be enough. He needed evidence._  
  
He glanced at his phone. Sure enough, the screen brightened as it received a new message.  


> **Taroma**
> 
> ◂ yaras def the blackened  
>  00:00  
>  ◂ but kiriko couldve killed seri  
>  00:00  
>  ◂ wdyth??  
>  00:00

  
_What do I think?_ Well, he took pride in the fact that he managed to read his rival’s theories even before he brought them up. But before he answered, he needed to review the case again.

The victim was Shie Shimiya, the Ultimate Linguist. Her body had been discovered floating inside the evacuation tank on the second floor of the building. Regrettable that the participants, having regained their emotional independence, had lost their ability to define their surroundings; her character archetype was so forgettable, she could not have been anything but a victim. More surprisingly was the second body they found at the other end of the building’s canal system: Seri Hanaike, the Ultimate Ichthyologist. The rule in that happening was that _if two different murders by two different murderers occur at the same time, only the one whose victim was found first would be the blackened_.

As could be expected, the focus shifted solely on finding out Shimiya’s killer–in this trial for survival, the Ultimate Ichthyologist's death had become an afterthought. Yet sharing the same _modus operanti_ was too big of a coincidence; they both understood it.

That was where their common understanding ended.

> ◂ kiriko knew seris body wd be uuh displaced  
>  00:00  
>  ◂ why wd she hang out w/ rantaro otherwise??  
>  00:00  
>  ◂ she wanted to be part of the group discoverin the body  
>  00:00  
>  ◂ but she didnt know abt shie  
>  00:00

The King–and his logic befitted the name the other’s screen had given him, as a form of rare baptism–privileged an interpersonal logic. According to him, there had to be a reason why _Not-So-Random_ had been killed by _Mac Guy_. In Kuromori’s case, she had enough reason to target Hanaike, whose testimony during the first trial hurt her own credibility. And someone as shrewd as she would not forget the announcement’s rule that compromised Tadashi’s killer. But while this reasoning might have worked for the second trial, he did not share the King’s conviction this time around.

It all came down to the third motive.

Before Hanaike’s and Shimiya’s murder, there had been Monokuma’s motive. He remembered Amami’s frozen smile, the commissure of his lips, as he was told how they once missed another boy’s virgin skin, on some busy platform, right before he took the train towards Nowhere; now carving into his whitened cheeks, as he listened to the person waiting for him. Obviously, those pre-registered messages provoked strong reactions in many of the twelve participants remaining.

But Kuromori was not among them.

The faux detective’s suspicion had fallen on another student entirely, and as he communicated them, his own untold words came from the bigger screen’s speakers.

_Wait._

_Forget about the rule–If the water pumps worked in alternance as was described, there was no reason that Yara’s performance did not affect him too–_

_“Kiriko confessed her presence on the crime scene, at the same time Shie was killed.”_

_“No, that’s wrong.” Through Yara’s eyes, They saw Rantaro’s smile, the gotcha hanging at the tip of his lip. “Sorry, but your argument only stands if Shie was the first person killed, y’know?” They saw too–though the Ultimate Raindancer did not see it, feeling overwhelmed by dread–the sweat Rantaro swept against his shirt, the blood rushing against his temples like war drums._

_“Let’s say it was Seri who was killed first. We’ve already figured out where he was initially killed, right? On the second floor. So, if we just reverse the order of events…” His finger drew a diagonal arrow on the map he had displayed on his Monopad, between the pictures of the two victims. “Kiriko would’ve been in the lower grounds when Seri was killed, just above her head. Before Shie’s murder.”_

_“Interesting,” interrupted Kiriko. Like the first drops of rain showering the dead summer crops, right before the storm, the Ultimate Adventurer had learned quite quickly to fear this alien understanding. “But how are you going to prove that?”_

_“Jeez, Kiriko! Do you want to be executed?”_

_But Rantaro had stopped listening to Natsumi. It was dangerous gambling on another student’s cooperation–he would have thought the threat of execution would have been enough. He forced his eyes open. “Haha, you’re right. I can’t. But someone else can. Isn’t that right…_

_Atsu Owari, the Ultimate Horticulturist?”_

> ◂ ur uncle taught you well mr detective  
>  00:00  
>  ◂ but hdyk??  
>  00:00

He smiled. Not either one of those fake smiles he had long learned to do, but a real smile, a jaw-numbing smile, the kind of smiles that lingered in your muscle memory long after it disappeared from your features. He consciously pulled his hat over his face. How did I know–

> He did not kill Hanaike spec. it was an external motive. He was  
>  the only participant motivated enough to kill. ▸  
>  00:00 

He sent his message and waited for the answer.

And waited.

And–that same smile he had donned started to fold. Was he wrong? No, he had been spot-on. So, had he been vexating in some way? No matter how he read his message, bouncing back to the bottom of the screen as if scrolling upwards would trigger a response, he could not see how. How–

He realized he did not know much about his King. Not in the same way his King remembered the useless details about his life he had even forgotten he had told. Sure, he had quickly learned to decipher those abbreviations he would be the only person to use, the longmadeupwords when he wanted to share a moment of the show when Amami would point the finger at the blackened with that sly smile. Those kinds of artificial emotions.

But he did not know anything else. No, he needed not to know. He did not care about where he lived, but in a space in his own World. Did not care why he named Rantaro. Did not care why he thought the rest of them, personal enemies. Did not care why he refused to watch the punishments.

Just as his own eyes were drawn avidly towards the live feed, the guilty thought

_(despairful.)_

remained.

_Yara Ameru had been executed. The Ultimate Raindancer had danced to the very end–until her legs collapsed under her own weight, until her head, like a tame bear in one of those roadside circus shows, spun back. If it were not for the unnatural bent of her body, she could have been mistaken for the innocent sacrifice to Raijin._

_Yara Ameru had been executed, yet no one found relief._

_Of the nine remaining students–it seemed so long ago since they were sixteen, and now half of them gone–eight stood in a half-circle, silently looking at their last classmate. But Atsu did not look back. The sight of his feet, the eternal crust of red soil on his boots, had become of utmost interest to him._

_“… Why did you do it?” In spite of her oblivious character, Natsumi spoke with a soft but strong awareness. “Why did you have to kill Seri? I thought… I thought you guys were friends.”_

_“… Seri said it was silly. To grow flowers, I mean. ‘Cause I was trying to make this place pretty, you know? ‘Cause I was going to stay rooted. And, y‘know, he was right.”_

_“Oh, I’m sure he didn’t mean–”_

_“For real?” Kiriko cut in, and she could not hide her disdain–not that she ever tried to. “You murdered someone over something as petty as–”_

“Yes! _For real,” Atsu spilled up with foreign strength, and all but one student jumped. He could not hide the tremor building up in his throat. “What, you’d feel better if I had a good reason to kill him? A karmic excuse? Well, I don’t! I killed my friend, and now I’m not even going to see him again! I’m not. Ever…”_

_And with that Atsu collapsed, putting his arms around his knees and his head under them, smothering the tears spilling out. Students shifted awkwardly. Would it be bad to wish for a murderer to get his punishment, even when they knew the same hands that strangled an innocent’s neck, had once held a lover’s?_

_“You would have done it too…” Atsu muttered, at last, a voice so low yet so full of defiance. “You would have done it too.” And Their eyes through the camera wandered over an oddly silent Rantaro. The Ultimate Adventurer physically recoiled with disgust, eyes flaring under the shadows of his bangs._

_“The person waiting for me,” he said firmly, “would hate me if I killed anyone.” And he realized, at that same moment, that it was the truth._

His heart jumped–well, a better word would be collided, as a bird would try to escape its cage of bones–when the phone vibrated in his hands.

> ◂ i just don't get it  
>  00:00

He did not know what to do when the other dropped his little spelling quirks, his only defenses, like the quietest cry for help; because the Detective only realized now that the King had become something a bit more than a rival. It was only at that moment, too, he was certain how to name his feeling. His mouth had forgotten the shape of it, but it was inscribed in his being since the dawn of man.

Come to think of it–

_Come to think of it, that was when things started to change for Them._

*

“King, why do you want to be in Danganronpa?”  
  
They had needed no spoken agreement to keep the names they had grown accustomed to. The King had just walked out of Shinjuku Station this day, seen the grey skies and its sun, in the form of a burning cherry tree, and said that it was _no wonder a Detective would live here, straight out of a noir_. Greasy unkempt hair surrounding his face like a crown, immature body bowing over the holy weight of the Imperial Capital’s school uniform, it did seem ill-fitting to call him a king. But at the same time, he was a Detective; his very own nature was paradoxical in this Hopeful World.  
  
Besides, they did not need to know their past selves. Those were the persons they had killed, the very moment they had lifted the pen from the application forms.  
  
The King had his eyes glued to the phone screen, discovering–and the Detective felt something cold bubbling at the surface of his lips when stars filled the other boy’s eyes at Amami’s voice, rather than his own–the last events of the season.  
  
_“And why should I listen to_ you _?” Kiriko had spun her head over her shoulder, boring holes into the Ultimate Adventurer._  
  
_“Please, Kiriko…” Natsumi pleaded. They had not thought much of the Ultimate Bartender before, but she had brought some humility that Rantaro definitively needed._  
  
_“… Fine,” Kiriko gave in with a sigh, turning around. “Be quick.”_  
  
_“… So,” Rantaro started, recovering from Kiriko’s sudden surrender. “Due to our… living conditions in this run-down academy, I thought the mastermind would be hiding among the essential talents. Who would kill the person that feeds you, right? But Bassui…” Rantaro breathed between his teeth as if to give the late detective his own voice back. “Bassui thought it was too obvious. If someone went after the mastermind, they would follow the same logic as mine. However, there’s one person whose talent is both essential… and not.”_  
  
_“The Ultimate Nuclear Engineer!” Natsumi jumped and pointed at her. “You didn’t use your talent since you restored power back on in the main building!”_  
  
_“Then,” the aforementioned Ultimate blinked slowly, consciously, like a crocodile’s eyes would. “by that logic, I must be the mastermind.”_  
  
_“Oh, I don’t think you’re the mastermind,” Rantaro said quietly. “In fact, I think you’re the next_ victim _.” Kiriko flinched–she might have suspected as much, but spoken from someone else’s mouth gave those words a new tangibility, an inescapable truth. He went on:_  
  
_“If we managed to come to that conclusion, someone else will. Someone who will be more than happy to kill the mastermind. Someone like Atsu, for example. I thought you’d like to know that.”_  
  
_“… No, I won’t be killed,” Kiriko finally stated, and there was but a sliver of relief in her voice. “Monokuma promised me that. He said my death would be… predictable.”_  
  
_“Predictable?” Natsumi tilted her head, but Rantaro only nodded prudently._  
  
“… King? Are you–”  
  
“I want to have control,” the other boy answered in a toneless voice, not departing his attention. “I’m tired of being used by people who act like they must be protecting me like they know what’s best for me, like I can’t have my own voice. Bunch of liars, the lot of them.” He felt it again. It was fascinating to hear the King, yet  
  
_(despairful.)_  
  
yet it was like frostbite straining his features, this unnatural complacent expression inbred generations ago, as this vomit of words was consecrated to the fiction. “But I guess they must be right–isn’t it odd, coming from a guy calling himself a King? Well, that’s not even my number, that’s my brother’s. And, since my life’s not really mine, I’ll make it so my death is. So! When I’ll be in the show–”  
  
“ _You won’t remember that_ ,” the Detective cried out in spite of himself. “You won’t… They’ll give us new memories anyway.”  
  
The King finally looked at him, with one of those odd smiles that only reached one side of the face. “You really think so?”  
  
He bashfully shrunk away behind the shade of his hat. No, they could not control everything. Not a contestant killing another over sunflowers. Not Monokuma breaking away from his programming. Most importantly, they could not control Amami remembering. Or noticing his lack of remembrance, scars, and kisses orphaned of a Loved One. Starting to doubt the memories he was given.  
  
“What about you?”  
  
_What about me…_ If he had been asked before, he could have answered without hesitation. He liked Danganronpa because it was real. Those emotions on its characters’ faces, the shock, the anger, the sadness and, yes, the despair, were real. Real in a way the Hopeful World had long ceased to be. But now, he looked at the King, at this face that had no right being so full, so complete, so…  
  
_(despairful?)_  
  
The remainder of the day would give him an idea of what he would miss. A shared chocolate-mint and purple-sweet-potato icecream, even though he hated the taste of it. A sunset, the light sinking behind the blocks as if it were the end of the world. An awkward kiss at the train station, of two boys who had never kissed but a character on a life-sized poster– _take that, Amami!_ Being in love. Being heartbroken, too.  
  
Yeah, he did not want to be in Danganronpa anymore; but it was too late to regret.  
  
“I guess… I just don’t like how this world is lying to us,” he could simply answer instead. “About what we’re supposed to feel.”  
  
The King nodded knowingly before his eyes turned back to the screen.  
  
The Detective could not watch the season’s ending.  
  
_“I’m sorry, Rantaro…”_  
  
_Rantaro did not hear that. Did not listen. Did not recognize this stranger’s voice, the silhouettes of his remaining classmates backing away from Them like the plague._  
  
_“I had to vote against you,” Natsumi Shouggeri said. “I had to… We had to. To get the perfect ending, we must have it. One last game…”_  
  
_They may have said something else. They may had put their hand into his, awkwardly, like it was a first date and they both discovered this foreign sensation of loving_  
  
(wish I could have shared it with you instead.)  
  
_but everything was lost in a daze. There was nothing but the single red strike next to his name, and Monokuma’s ugly laughter resonating in his ears._

*

“Shu-i-chi–”  
  
If he were being honest with himself, hanging out with Kokichi Oma had not been his first choice. Nor his second. When Monokuma left, with his ultimatum lingering like an echo, most of his classmates had elected to stick with the people they had woken up with, and Shuichi had just been about to do the same; before the Ultimate Supreme Leader planted his feet into his–literally, too, as he saw Kaede being whisked away by some other girl with a cascade of blue hair–and dragged him across the Academy, one hand flirting with the crease of his wrist, as if he had always lived there.  
  
He hoped he was right, thinking it was just a childish whim, and that Kokichi would soon grow tired of the novelty of him being a Detective. But the day had dragged on. They had spent the day in the AV room selecting movies–he suspected that his classmate had been slow in his selection _on purpose_ –and in the end, Kokichi had found himself captivated by some mystery film, giving some time for Shuichi to think. There were some things Kokichi could not lie about, like the way he held hands without quite reaching fingers, their coldness–  
  
“Shuichi!”  
  
He only registered it when he felt his back hit the back of the sofa–and evaluated the height of his jump by the prolongation of Kokichi’s laughter, this nasal _nee-heehee_ that shook his entire body like a cold shiver.  
  
_How am I going to survive this dating show…?_  
  
“Why are you ignoring me? _Gasp_ , could it be–” He would probably learn to ignore the crocodile tears welling up in Kokichi’s eyes. “–that you’re bored with me? How cruel!” It would not be this day, though.  
  
“Sorry, I… I’m not much of a cinephile, actually…”  
  
“Well,” Kokichi bounced back instantly, “you gotta learn if you want to be my beloved!”  
  
“I just don’t see the point of them. Shouldn’t we focus on reality instead?”  
  
“Wooow! I was just thinking the exact same thing! I can’t believe we thought about something so _useless_ ,” and Shuichi felt guilty, somehow, to bring remembrance of the situation they were actually in, prisoners inside this academy, “at the exact same time, too… That must be destiny!  
  
Maybe you and I were lovers in a past life!”  
  
“We could have been.”  
  
Kokichi fell oddly silent. His face twisted into an alien expression–a ghost of a smile cutting the insides of his cheeks, a thick line drawn above his eyebrows, and that was when Shuichi realized what he had just said. Aloud.  
  
_Why did I say that?!_  
  
His hand reached for the brim of a hat that was not there, fumbling half-formed apologies. The Supreme Leader’s twisted features softened, looking at some distant shivering figure behind Shuichi’s head; and Shuichi’s whole body tensed inwardly as if readying itself for the blow.  
  
“So, you remember?”  
  
An apology died in a weak gurgle. Kokichi remembers something too? It was true: since he had woken up, head pressed sideways on a locker’s door, he had known there was something wrong. He did not have lapses of memory per say, but when he dwelled on recent events, it brought about this feeling of _déjà vu_ ; and when he thought about Kokichi’s hand dragging him away, as if he struggled to get down to the shape of his own hand, he thought _no, it’s my own hand which is all wrong_.  
  
“Does that mean you remember–”  
  
“Nope! That was a lie!”  
  
Shuichi suspected Kokichi was lying about lying, but forced a played smile out. There was no use confronting him on that; the Ultimate Detective had not figured out yet the methodology behind his lies. But he started to get a grasp of his current situation.  
  
One: he had known Kokichi Oma.  
  
Two: he had had a relationship with Kokichi Oma. Now, he tried to reason inwardly, he did not know what type of relationship it was; only what it failed to be, as his mouth had betrayed, unbeknownst to the Supreme Leader–but was it really the case? Kokichi was a liar, but he certainly was not stupid; and he could reflect how every action had been carefully planned to lead to Shuichi’s reaction.  
  
Which led to the last bullet point:  
  
Three: they had been thrown in this dating game show, as a form of–penance? And he had until Monokuma’s ultimatum expired, in ten days, to get what they could not have in their past life. _Well_ , the clock’s hands grinned, _nine days now_.  
  
Kokichi smiled a full, toothy smile, the detective saw with renewed affection, and pulled him forward with startling strength. And, this time, he closed his fingers around Kokichi’s own.  
  
In his head, the movie rewinded.  
  
_“So, what’s happening now?”_  
  
_Tsumugi pressed her fingernail on the ring of her cup. It had been long since Rantaro had done nail painting for his brothers and sisters, since Danganronpa had tampered with his memories, and it felt therapeutic to do it again, to let his hand relearn the precise gestures of the three strokes needed to spread the color. He appreciated the result, even if it was_ Tsumugi Shirogane _who wore it._  
  
_“Don’t get me wrong,” Rantaro chuckled as she gaped in wonder, “I have no intention to play along forever. Spill it.”_  
  
_“Initially, you were supposed to be the Ultimate Survivor, entrusted with the fifty-third season’s Final Revelation. You would’ve died,” Tsumugi added, and the dismissive tone of her voice made the hair on his skin stand up. “But Kokichi would’ve been your memory-keeper, the only one to know the hints to unlock your own safe after your death. It was the perfect ship! The audience would’ve loved it!”_  
  
_“So, what made you change your plans?”_  
  
_“Well, you remembered. But around the same time, the audience started to get interested in Shuichi. I realized my perfect ship plainly couldn‘t work. I mean… You lost Kokichi the moment you signed up for Danganronpa. Killing games go against his established character traits._  
  
_“But Shuichi’s curious, he’s patient, he’s persistent. He’s perfect to complete Kokichi in your stead. But in that other scenario, Kokichi would’ve–”_  
  
_“Don’t tell me.” Rantaro did not want to know what Tsumugi had planned for Kokichi. He was frustrated he could not have talked to Kokichi directly–and why, oh_ why _, he was in the_ original game _at all–but he saw him scampering away, just as he had Kaede Akamatsu pushed into his arms, but he would be content knowing Kokichi safe. A pathetic bare minimum, but still._  
  
_Thankfully, Tsumugi had the good idea to heed his implicit warning._  
  
_“So I had to turn this set into a dating show, in such a short notice…Normally, a cosplayer like me can‘t tolerate inconsistencies between iterations of her characters, but…It can’t be helped. I understand that all this info can be… ‘a tad overwhelming,’” she borrowed from his mouth._  
  
_Rantaro hummed softly in understanding, as he cupped her right hand to apply an overcoat–but there was still something that did not click. Something about Tsumugi’s knowledge, extend far beyond the boundaries of the game._  
  
_“One last question, then:_ what _are you?”_  
  
_It was a small satisfaction to see the mild Ultimate Cosplayer look away distantly, her hand’s motion unsure around her glasses, but that feeling did not last. Rantaro thought he heard the Nanokumas buzzing around her, and the Ultimate Adventurer that saw through his eyes saw it as it really was: a swarm of flies._  
  
_“Um, isn’t that plain obvious? I’m no different from you, I just have a different role. Or you thought the Hopeful World was something not_ fiction _?”_


End file.
